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Post by princetoncrusader on Jul 4, 2023 16:37:15 GMT -5
WSJ columnist Jason Riley published an interesting column with extensive discussion of how he got to HC.
In his memoir, “A Personal Odyssey,” the black economist Thomas Sowell explains one of the byproducts of racial preferences in academia.
“One of the ironies that I experienced in my own career was that I received more automatic respect when I first began teaching in 1962, as an inexperienced young man with no Ph.D. and few publications, than later on in the 1970s, after accumulating a more substantial record,” he writes. “What happened in between was ‘affirmative action’ hiring of minority faculty.”
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To illustrate the point, Mr. Sowell recounts a student approaching him after class at UCLA, where he taught economics in the 1970s. The student was having trouble understanding something in the textbook, and Mr. Sowell explained to him what it meant. “Are you sure?” the student said.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Mr. Sowell replied. “I wrote the textbook.” The student then noticed the professor’s name on the cover and was “obviously embarrassed,” Mr. Sowell writes. “It was a sign of the times, one of the fruits of ‘affirmative action.’ ”
The political left’s reaction to Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurrence in last week’s Supreme Court ruling that bars the use of racial preferences in college admissions is more evidence that affirmative action stigmatizes black achievement. Justice Thomas has been labeled a hypocrite for opposing racial preferences because he supposedly benefited from them as a college student, yet no one has produced any evidence that race played a role in his admission to Holy Cross College or Yale Law School.
According to press accounts, Justice Thomas was recruited to Holy Cross by a dean, Father John Brooks, who wanted to increase the number of black students on campus, but the justice has long denied this claim. He started college at Immaculate Conception, a seminary in Missouri, but left after a year and returned home to Savannah, Ga. In his memoir, he says he applied to Holy Cross at the urging of a nun who had taught him in high school. “I ranked near the top of my class at Immaculate Conception, so Holy Cross had quickly accepted my application,” he writes. “The only problem was money, but the director of financial aid told me that something could be worked out.”
It’s true that some black students who had been contacted by Brooks were admitted to Holy Cross the same year that Justice Thomas transferred there, but the justice has rejected the suggestion that he was one of Brooks’s recruits. “A nun suggested Holy Cross. That’s how I wound up there,” Justice Thomas told a reporter in 2007. “Your industry”—the media—“has suggested that we were all recruited. That’s a lie. Really, it’s a lie. I don’t mean a mistake. It’s a lie.”
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Nor is there any evidence that Justice Thomas was admitted to Yale Law School under its affirmative-action program rather than through the regular admissions process. He graduated from Holy Cross ninth in his class (of more than 500 students). According to the New York Times, eight Holy Cross graduates were admitted to Yale Law between 1968 and 1978, the decade that included Justice Thomas’s law school career. Why assume that he got in only because of his race? Why question the justice’s credentials but not Bill Clinton’s or Hillary Rodham’s, two of his fellow Yale Law students? The reason is affirmative action, which has made people suspicious of black academic and professional success.
Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion makes clear that the use of race in college admissions is wrong primarily because it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. But Justice Thomas performs a public service in his concurrence by detailing the harm that these policies have inflicted, even on their intended beneficiaries. Reiterating what he has written in previous opinions, Justice Thomas notes that racial double standards “taint” accomplishment. Thus, when blacks and Hispanics “take positions in the highest places of government, industry or academia, it is an open question . . . whether their skin color played a part in their advancement.”
There’s also the question of how much affirmative action has contributed to the academic achievement gap in K-12 education. How many black students didn’t try as hard as they could have because they knew they would be held to a lower standard than their white and Asian peers? How many teachers didn’t push their black students as hard for the same reason?
Justice Thomas’s concurrence includes several references to the writings of Mr. Sowell, a leading critic of affirmative action for more than 50 years. After the Supreme Court upheld race-conscious admissions in a 2003 ruling, Mr. Sowell lamented that he probably wouldn’t live to see the day when the court finally issued “a clear-cut statement that racial quotas and preferences were illegal.” He was wrong, thankfully. The decision was handed down on June 29, the day before Mr. Sowell celebrated his 93rd birthday.
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Post by KY Crusader 75 on Jul 4, 2023 17:15:25 GMT -5
Dr Sowell is brilliant and has a great ability to explain complex issues in a clear and understandable way
This is first I’ve heard that Justice Thomas finished 9th in his class at HC. Many people no doubt hate hearing that
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Post by hcpride on Jul 4, 2023 19:18:26 GMT -5
It is interesting that Clarence Thomas’ arrival at Holy Cross may indeed have had little to do with Father Brooks’ recruiting trip (s) down south. Much less a lowered academic standard to gain admission.
Nothing gets in the way of a political point but that would mean much of the recent criticism of Justice Thomas (in The Boston Globe and otherwise) may be even more faux than we imagined.
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Post by alum on Jul 4, 2023 21:06:32 GMT -5
The ninth in class appears in Fraternity. Thomas has stated he benefited from affirmative action. I assume that he was talking about Yale. I don’t recall if he mentions LSAT scores in his autobiography. Perhaps that is the issue.
Fraternity also makes it clear that CT was not a product of the Brooks recruiting trip.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Jul 4, 2023 21:19:17 GMT -5
Dr Sowell is brilliant and has a great ability to explain complex issues in a clear and understandable way This is first I’ve heard that Justice Thomas finished 9th in his class at HC. Many people no doubt hate hearing that It is reported that CT graduated cum laude. One isn't ninth in the class if one graduates cum laude. I believe his major was English. Tried to check whether CT was indeed 9th in the class. However, > The 1971 Purple Patcher offers a de minimums presentation of each graduate, simply name and photo. No address, no list of participatory activities, no majors, no honors. (As an aside, the 1971 Purple Patcher has the most chaotic presentation of any yearbook I have ever read. Full of photography, little in the way of descriptive text. Looking for the record of any athletic team? Not there. Looking for a team photo? Not there. The first section is about protests of the war in Southeast Asia, Kent State, etc. The accompanying text is by Lewis Carroll. It is as if the yearbook is a protest against structure.) (Disclosure: I was a Purple Patcher editor.) > The commencement program for 1971, which should include listings of those who graduated with honors, is not on-line. ---------------- Also, CT was class of 71. Those recruited by Brooks were class of '72. -------------- I will say that I think it a bit disingenuous to say that Holy Cross would be a good place for a Black student to apply in 1967-68-69, in the absence of Brooks' outreach initiative. In the class of '71, CT's class, there are two Black students in a class of 500+. Token representation, IMO.
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Post by longsuffering on Jul 4, 2023 23:01:19 GMT -5
Dr Sowell is brilliant and has a great ability to explain complex issues in a clear and understandable way This is first I’ve heard that Justice Thomas finished 9th in his class at HC. Many people no doubt hate hearing that Don't hate it but am surprised. He has generally been fairly reticent so you don't get to hear his intelligence as much as with a motor mouth like say a Barney Frank.
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Post by hcpride on Jul 5, 2023 4:37:12 GMT -5
Dr Sowell is brilliant and has a great ability to explain complex issues in a clear and understandable way This is first I’ve heard that Justice Thomas finished 9th in his class at HC. Many people no doubt hate hearing that I suspect some of CT’s political opponents know he’s bright but he’s a prominent black conservative so all manner of insults are hurled his way. And the folks doing it, in The Boston Globe and otherwise, feel very good about themselves. And never apologize.
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Post by sader1970 on Jul 5, 2023 8:20:36 GMT -5
Down the rabbit hole (again): 1. I am not aware that anyone here of any political stripe has denied that Clarence was intelligent/smart 2. Agree that if he was 9th in his graduating class, you would think he'd be higher than "just" "cum laude and, at minimum, magna cum laude (but, so what?- let's all concede the guy was/is smart) 3. As I previously posted, CT was technically not a "Fraternity" guy in that Brooks didn't go to see him as other notables, including a certain poster here. That said, he did come in the same year with the Fraternity but as a sophomore transfer, not a freshman. 4. "Fraternity" DOES include CT and, in fact, his picture is on the cover of the book along with Stan Grayson who I believe, without re-reading the book, was on athletic scholarship and likely would have come anyway. 5. My classmate, previously referred to in another thread (not Art Martin) who filled me in on some stuff last reunion but caused me to re-read sections of the book which states: he "was now living off campus as a senior, trying to have as little to do with Brooks and the BSU as possible. He had already alienated the black athletes with his caustic diatribes about their inflated egos and devotion to sports. . . . . He now had the black corridor to hate too. 'Congratulations on your resegregation!' He told Ted Wells. Only Clarence Thomas seemed to have a close relationship with [classmate]. . . . stemming in part from their shared Georgia background and from the fact that they often agreed with each other on black politics. Notwithstanding Thomas's love of combat gear, neither of them was all that interested in raging against 'the Man.' " My Classmate referenced here was among those who was directly interviewed by the author, so I take these quotes, coupled with what he told me directly, as true. 6. As previously stated, I had exactly one interaction with CT who was with Eddie Jenkins at the time. The two could not be more polar opposites. Eddie, personable and friendly and appreciative while CT was morose and "unfriendly" would be putting it kindly, despite my friend and I doing a good deed for them both. I have no use for CT whether he be a flaming liberal or ultra-conservative. Politics has nothing to do with my feelings towards him but will say that I believe based on my one experience that Anita Hill told the truth and CT did not during his confirmation hearings. I can prove nothing and as I often say, CT "couldn't pick me out of a police line-up." But, I know what I know. While CT may not have been directly part of Fr. Brooks' recruitment journey, the book clearly states that his transfer was accomplished after deadlines for such transfers had passed and, as such, a special exception was made for him. Whether you call that "Affirmative Action" or not matters not a whit but there is very little doubt in my mind that had he been white, an exception would not have been made . . . . unless, maybe a legacy. I am also convinced that it was important for Fr. Brooks to have a HC alum become a member of SCOTUS. I do not believe as much as he would like that to happen, that he would intentionally lie or misrepresent his testimony. I just believe that I saw a different side of CT than he ever did. But, I repeat, neither I nor anyone here that I've seen, has said that CT was not bright nor deserving of entry and graduation from Holy Cross. I can't/won't comment on his Yale admission as I know nothing about what their standards were at the time. But, he was smart enough to graduate law school and whatever he finished there, as someone posted earlier, "what do you call someone who graduated last in his law class? 'Lawyer'." Finally, when there is a 6-3 decision on SCOTUS, even if CT voted the other way or wasn't on the Court, it's still a 5-4 decision. So, let's get over this and move on.
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Post by mm67 on Jul 5, 2023 9:55:56 GMT -5
CT must have been special. Wasn't he awarded a Martin Luther King Jr. scholarship by HC? Certainly, that was a terrific honor. I moved on from CT 30+ years ago after watching the performative CT-AH black Punch & Judy show. Popcorn entertainment for much of white America. Irrelevant now but most folks in my coterie(including HC R's & Ds) had little doubt about AH's testimony and that CT was lying to cover his butt. Greeted by knowing smiles & winks by some, outrage by others; embarrassment/anger by family closest to me. And so it goes. Move on.
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Post by longsuffering on Jul 5, 2023 11:10:10 GMT -5
CT must have been special. Wasn't he awarded a Martin Luther King Jr. scholarship by HC? Certainly, that was a terrific honor. I moved on from CT 30+ years ago after watching the performative CT-AH black Punch & Judy show. Popcorn entertainment for much of white America. Irrelevant now but most folks in my coterie(including HC R's & Ds) had little doubt about AH's testimony and that CT was lying to cover his butt. Greeted by knowing smiles & winks by some, outrage by others; embarrassment/anger by family closest to me. And so it goes. Move on. I had doubt. I remember discounting her complaints to some degree because they first were raised, iirc, in a Senate confirmation hearing. With Father Brooks publicly behind him, I was rooting for CT's confirmation.
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Post by mm67 on Jul 5, 2023 11:31:12 GMT -5
CT must have been special. Wasn't he awarded a Martin Luther King Jr. scholarship by HC? Certainly, that was a terrific honor. I moved on from CT 30+ years ago after watching the performative CT-AH black Punch & Judy show. Popcorn entertainment for much of white America. Irrelevant now but most folks in my coterie(including HC R's & Ds) had little doubt about AH's testimony and that CT was lying to cover his butt. Greeted by knowing smiles & winks by some, outrage by others; embarrassment/anger by family closest to me. And so it goes. Move on. I had doubt. I remember discounting her complaints to some degree because they first were raised, iirc, in a Senate confirmation hearing. With Father Brooks publicly behind him, I was rooting for CT's confirmation. Totally understandable, given our connection to CT. My feeling was he did it but it was not sufficient to deny him a seat on the SC. Although I was pretty sure he was lying I felt it was up to the Senate to decide. Could be wrong but I believe at the time of the claimed incident she shared her story with a friend rather than going through any public embarrassment. The hearing was an enjoyable soap opera for millions. It was historic. No doubt the AH -CT hearing will be in the first paragraph of his obit. It's ancient history.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Jul 5, 2023 13:48:56 GMT -5
Down the rabbit hole (again): ..... 6. As previously stated, I had exactly one interaction with CT who was with Eddie Jenkins at the time. The two could not be more polar opposites. Eddie, personable and friendly and appreciative while CT was morose and "unfriendly" would be putting it kindly, despite my friend and I doing a good deed for them both. .... As I have noted before, I knew Ginni Thomas when she was a senior staffer to the House leadership (Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, so long ago) and we had occasion to work together on initiatives of interest to both the Executive and Legislative branches. I met CT once, at a reception which he attended with Ginni. Ginni introduced us. I found him friendly but reserved, and not one for small talk, and no reminiscing about HC. I did read with interest a recent op-ed by a lawyer about CT's strong belief that disclosure requirements are unconstitutional, and in SCOTUS cases involving disclosure requirements, he has been the lone dissent in an otherwise unanimous decision affirming the legality of such requirements. And CT appears to have migrated this conviction into his being selective about what he includes in a required disclosure form. One year, he (or someone) decided to omit Ginni's six figure employment income. Hard to believe that was the result of simple carelessness. ----------- I think the ranked ninth would be more accurate if it was expressed as top nine percent. Summas constitute the top one percent, the magnas about the top seven percent (or 35 students in a class of 500) and the cum laudes represent the top nine percent, of a class that perhaps graduated 75-80 percent without any honors. I am unaware that HC has ever ranked a class in absolute terms, #1, #2, #3 and so on, until #550, #600, etc. .
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Post by hcpride on Jul 5, 2023 14:18:22 GMT -5
…Finally, when there is a 6-3 decision on SCOTUS, even if CT voted the other way or wasn't on the Court, it's still a 5-4 decision. So, let's get over this and move on. Good point. But just to tie up some loose ends When President Rougeau wrote his Boston Globe op-Ed titled: Clarence Thomas was a Beneficiary of Race-based Admissions at my School, was he ‘mistaken’? And ‘mistaken’ here too? The 20 young men he [Brooks] recruited have become an illustrious group, including business leaders, a Pulitzer Prize winner, a Super Bowl champion, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, class of 1971.Another ‘mistake’?: Thomas, once the beneficiary of the most overt example of race-based admissions I can imagine…That’s a lot of ‘mistakes’ (central to his thesis BTW) in just the opening paragraphs of his op-Ed. A full-throated defense of racial discrimination in the college admissions process is to be expected given President Rougeau’s political leanings, but the (still uncorrected) ‘mistakes’ are a bit concerning.
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Post by alum on Jul 5, 2023 14:25:19 GMT -5
I didn't trust PP (shame on me) and tried to look for the 1971 commencement program myself. While I did not find that, I did find the 1970-71 catalog which included the list of graduates in the class of 1970. It showed 36 students at magna cum laude or better and about 45 cum laudes in a class of 550. The same catalog shows that cum laude required 3.5 and magna required 3.7. We have seen reporting that he graduated cum laude and we know that when Father Brooks, at the Senate hearing, read from a letter he wrote to Father Swords about CT in April 1970 , he stated that CT had a GPA of 3.577. That would seem to be through first semester junior year. It appears that they went to multi year catalogs after that and did not include a list of graduates. Assuming that the number of graduates with cum laude and better distinction remained relatively the same the following year, we can figure that CT would likely have not graduated ninth in his class, but rather as PP suggests, top 9% of his class. My rough estimate would say that to get to magna cum laude, CT would have had to get close to perfect grades his last three semesters which is possible. Lots of assumptions here, but it is possible that Diane Brady got this a little wrong. He is obviously a brilliant guy. There was opposition to his being made a judge and justice for a variety of reasons. I am sure for some it was race. I am sure others noted that he had not engaged in the actual practice of litigation in the federal courts for very much time. (I have this objection about lots of people who are made judges but I will admit that many people take to the job even without much courtroom experience of their own.) He is not afraid to be out there alone on some opinions and the court has certainly come to him on some issues. crossworks.holycross.edu/course_catalog/index.2.html
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Post by alum on Jul 5, 2023 14:52:56 GMT -5
BTW--Jason Riley is the son in law of long time HC political science (political theory) prof, Dave Schaefer. For those who complain that the academy is full of lefties, I can assure you that Professor Schaefer is not one.
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Post by princetoncrusader on Jul 5, 2023 15:10:31 GMT -5
Over 1,800 comments on Riley's column on the WSJ website. I would roughly estimate about 60% supportive on CT and Riley. More than a few vitriolic comments about CT.
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Post by KY Crusader 75 on Jul 5, 2023 15:21:50 GMT -5
Holy Cross ranked my class in absolute terms because I know that with my 2.97 I finished #314 of 567 graduates in 1975. I found Northeastern University easier asI believe I was #2 with my 3.75 in the MBA class of 1977.
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Post by sader1970 on Jul 5, 2023 15:22:14 GMT -5
Being afraid this thread will expire soon (he said sarcastically), here's more food for thought but really not about Clarence Thomas per se (phew! ): From the NY Times. P.S.FWIW, when researching "diversity" back 30 +/- years ago for my company, the one thing that was emphasized in most research was diversity was "more than race and gender."
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Post by hcpride on Jul 5, 2023 15:51:07 GMT -5
Over 1,800 comments on Riley's column on the WSJ website. I would roughly estimate about 60% supportive on CT and Riley. More than a few vitriolic comments about CT. Clarence Thomas is pretty popular (although not in liberal circles).
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Post by newfieguy74 on Jul 5, 2023 17:14:15 GMT -5
Over 1,800 comments on Riley's column on the WSJ website. I would roughly estimate about 60% supportive on CT and Riley. More than a few vitriolic comments about CT. Clarence Thomas is pretty popular (although not in liberal circles). Clarence Thomas is "pretty popular" with readers of WSJ, and "pretty popular" with conservatives. Beyond that (which includes much more than liberals) it's open to debate.
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Post by sader1970 on Jul 5, 2023 17:20:44 GMT -5
If he's so popular, maybe he should consider leaving SCOTUS and running for POTUS? Just a thought. I mean, he's younger than either top candidate for either party.
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Post by hcpride on Jul 5, 2023 19:06:19 GMT -5
If he's so popular, maybe he should consider leaving SCOTUS and running for POTUS? Just a thought. I mean, he's younger than either top candidate for either party. Don't know about the two older gentlemen but popular decisions such as this (ending racial discrimination within the college admissions process and halting the presidential student debt shifting scheme) are only enhancing CT’s legacy. (Not necessarily in liberal circles.)
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Jul 6, 2023 7:29:59 GMT -5
The other Black graduate in the class of 1971 majored in chemistry, and immediately went on to attend Columbia's Graduate School of Business, where he received an MBA in 1973. At Columbia, he was the recipient of a Bronfman Fellowship. These fellowships (the value was seemingly sufficient to cover full cost of attendance) were bestowed by Seagram's, Ltd. of Canada, and were noteworthy enough to be reported in the NY Times. Unlike CT, this graduate entered HC in 1967, and matriculated four years. I believe he does not appear in "Fraternity". I would be surprised if he also did not graduate from HC with honors.
CT, who disfavors disclosure of personal information, would be right at home with the 1971 edition of the Purple Patcher, which basically discloses only the names of the graduates. I am surprised the editors didn't go a step further and put the names in Latin, or in Greek script. ---------------- It would not surprise me to learn that Ginni Thomas has been interviewed by prosecutors working for Jack Smith. Smith is currently focusing on lawyers who formulated schemes to overturn the election results. One target is almost certainly John Eastman, a former clerk to CT, who has remained a good friend of Ginni and CT, at least through January 2021.
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Post by sader1970 on Jul 6, 2023 8:07:57 GMT -5
Please consider not chumming the waters, Phreek.
Dean: if this whole thread ain't "politics," you might want to (again?) explain where the defining line is. While SCOTUS is theoretically "politics-free," in practice and reality, it is not. Rightly or wrongly, our Crusader brother on the bench has become a lightning rod from both ends of the political spectrum and while with few interloper exceptions, when it comes to Crusader sports, we are pretty unified here. I believe you bannned political discussions here because you felt it was divisive. IMHO, these threads are too.
While intellectually stimulating to have varied opinions discussed and debated, these threads get down to core beliefs that almost no one is going to change and, instead, dig their foxholes deeper.
As always, your call.
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